I Don't Know What to Do With This

A Thai monk, center, looks at the ruins of a temple burnt by
suspected Muslim separatists in Pattani Province, south of Bangkok,
Sunday, Oct. 16, 2005. About 20 suspected Muslim separatists stormed a
monastery, hacked an elderly Buddhist monk to death and fatally shot
two temple boys Sunday in southern Thailand, police said. Six other
people were killed in separate incidents across Thailand's three
southernmost provinces, where more than 1,000 people have died in an
insurgency that flared early last year.

Angel! I think you're right... Sometimes I wonder about my response to the world. Am I too passive? Could I be doing more? Maybe I can just sit with the fact that sitting and chanting is a response... perhaps not the most engaged, but still a compassionate response.

Isn't that just how it goes though? Faced with these kind of senseless acts, we question our response to the world, what we can do. Often I find people do quite a lot, in gentle ways, in subtle ways, in attitude and disposition also, and quite importantly in facing this kind of suffering, even if we don't know how to respond to it immediately. My mind turns toward fear in such cases. It is numbing to think about the amount of fear that can lead to people killing each other on the basis of religiosity, or other tightly held belief that is found threatening. As you say, it is hard to wrap our heads around this. But we feel this with our whole bodies. These kinds of acts are like body blows to our whole dharma body, thus I think chanting and practicing are ways to heal our body, to take care of the energy that arises, and to let other alternatives for action ferment. Thanks for the post Chalip.